The wacky professor
has a paper posted on Professor Schneider's wacky gadgetbahn site called:
Questions and Answers following a presentation on High-Capacity Personal Rapid Transit to an audience of about 60 persons at a meeting sponsored by The Institute of Theological and Interdisciplinary Studies held at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, March 23, 2007.
J. Edward Anderson sounds way tired and way old. He makes a lot of unsupported claims and accusations. He whines and complains that the "LRT lobby":
It has become clear to me that the LRT lobby has Minnesota quite locked out of considering anything but LRT. How they do it I can only guess, but I am aware that they have many paid lobbyists working the Legislature using public money to lobby for private interests. On March 26, 1974 the Minnesota Senate passed an Act (S. F. No. 2703, Chapter No. 573) “directing the metropolitan transit commission to plan an automated small vehicle fixed guideway system, . . .” This unfortunately put the fox in charge of the chicken coop. The MTC, which no longer exists, had strongly lobbied against this Act and contracted with a firm also opposed to new systems. Notwithstanding strong objections they used the large guideway and large cost of the Morgantown people mover as representative of PRT, which resulted in costs and visual impact far too high, which resulted in abandoning interest in PRT. Since the vast majority of people have no interest in transit issues, light-rail proponents became dominant on the Metropolitan Council. They were able to continue to use this bogus data to misrepresent PRT, which enabled them to keep PRT out of the picture. Over two decades ago the circumstantial evidence was strong that two staff members were fired for trying to compare light rail with the PRT system we were developing at the University of Minnesota. No staff member aware of that will dare to venture a favorable opinion about PRT.
No Ed. It's not the "LRT lobby"... here's a clue:
Question: How do we deal with squirrels, birds, raccoons, etc.?
Answer: Small creatures could nest in the bottom corners of my covered guideway without bothering anything. But, the plan is to build a maintenance vehicle equipped with a light, a television camera, and a high-pressure hose. It will be operated from time to time late at night to inspect the guideway interior to remove debris.
Right, lots of cities are going to want a transportation system that
rains soggy critters and their crap on pedestrians, buildings and vehicles.
